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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to remove a reference to the state's immigration law in a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. In that report, the State Department said the federal government's challenge to the immigration law is an example of how the U.S. is protecting human rights.

Calling the report "downright offensive," Brewer responded: "The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to review by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."

Should this provision be removed? Or is the State Department right to point out the government's legal challenge to the Arizona law -- significant portions of which have been overturned -- as an example of how the U.S. is protecting human rights?

Gov. Brewer seems as uninformed about international law, and our nation’s “duly enacted” (to borrow her verbiage) treaty obligations, as she is about the federal Constitution.

It is appropriate for the State Department, under the human rights reporting processes, to note federal efforts to curb Arizona’s unlawful targeting of immigrants. We love to wax poetic in this country about state rights and federalism, but history shows that most attacks on civil rights and liberty in this country come from local and state governments, with Uncle Sam acting as the ultimate guarantor of individual rights. This has nothing to do with globalism usurping U.S. laws – the Justice Department is merely asking the courts to enforce the federal Constitution.

The State Department’s reporting of this fact strengthens our credibility to demand that other national governments not look the other way when local authorities in their countries abuse the rights of their citizens.

President Obama has submitted his administration’s legal dispute with Arizona over immigration to the U.N.'s Human Rights Council. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called that move “downright offensive.” Her characterization is correct, albeit somewhat mild.

It is highly offensive that the administration would submit a constitutional argument over federalism and federal preemption to an international body for review – especially when that body includes dictatorial tyrannies such as Cuba and China that violate human rights routinely and with prejudice. It is another sign that President Obama holds our constitutional system of government in low regard and has little interest in upholding American sovereignty.

There is no universal right to violate a country’s immigration laws with impunity. It is no violation of human rights to enforce border security and basic immigration requirements. Indeed, the United States has some of the most open and permissive immigration laws in the world. Many of those criticizing Arizona, including Mexico, have much stricter and harsher immigration laws; their treatment of immigrants may justify human rights claims, but ours certainly do not.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona makes no human rights claims. It is insulting and provocative to include this dubious legal filing in the official “Report of the United States” to the United Nations. But it is certainly no surprise, given the administration’s implementation of a de facto amnesty for the vast majority of illegal aliens in our country, and its reluctance to enforce deportation orders and take other steps needed to get this situation under control.

In the Universal Periodic Review, the administration asserts that “President Obama remains firmly committed to fixing our broken immigration system.” Yet the only “fixes” he seems committed to are not enforcing federal laws he disagrees with; preventing states from enforcing their laws if it brings attention to his administration’s failure to enforce federal law; and extending amnesty to those who have broken our laws and thereby shown utter contempt for the basic principle that guarantees all our rights and freedoms: adherence to the rule of law.

One does not need to support the Arizona law in order to conclude that the State Department's reference to the law is absurd, offensive, and contrary to common practice in the American legal system, in which we generally accept the judgment of a duly constituted court, not executive branch bureaucrats, as to what is legal and constitutionally appropriate.

Even if one supports the administration's position in regard to the Arizona law, its challenge to the law is based not on questions of human rights but on questions of federal vs. state sovereignty on questions of immigration law. For the State Department to accuse an American state of a human rights violation, and to do so in an international forum, is truly outrageous, even if one sides with the administration's position and opposes the Arizona law.

Quite apart from Gov. Brewer's complaint, the Obama State Department's first report on human rights conditions in the U.S. -- submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council last week pursuant to a U.N. mandate that members conduct self-assessments every four years -- reads like a politically correct campaign brochure, touting everything from the administration’s stimulus spending to ObamaCare to financial reform legislation as promoting “human rights.”

We're told, for example, that America falls short on “fairness, equality, and dignity” in such areas as education, health and housing. And what's the evidence? Among other things, it’s that unemployment for blacks and Hispanics is higher than for whites, that there’s racial and ethnic disparity in home ownership rates, and that “whites are twice as likely as Native Americans to have a college degree.” Or consider this claim: “Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer 114 percent more often than non-Hispanic white men.”

That’s a “human rights” problem?

What the administration has done here is conflate real human rights -- the rights protected under the U.N. Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. is a party -- with specious "rights" -- the claims found in the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -- which the Senate has refused to ratify. And all of this is submitted in a document to be scrutinized by such human rights exemplars on the council as Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba.

After the U.S. ambassador walked out of the predecessor U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 2004, following the admission of Sudan to the commission in the midst of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, we did not join the commission's replacement in 2006, the new U.N. Council on Human Rights, not wanting to lend that body any credibility.

Last year, however, the Obama administration joined the council -- part of its outreach to the world. Enough said.

Why remove it? The federal government has always exercised sovereign control over who enters or leaves our borders. Or are Republicans planning to jettison that constitutional principle along with the 14th Amendment?

Sure it was unbelievable how the administration described the Arizona law in its U.N. report. But the governor needs to stand in line and the line is longer than the queue for a Justin Bieber concert.

The administration has been absolutely dumb in kowtowing to the Human Rights Council in the first place. As my colleagues at Heritage rightly noted, “The Bush administration rightly distanced the U.S. from the Human Rights Council and withheld the U.S. share of funding from it. When President Obama decided to support and engage the Council, he extended America’s credibility to a fatally flawed body. It also made it inevitable that the U.S. would participate in the dog and pony UPR show that has proven to be little more than a ‘mutual praise society’ for repressive regimes.”

Obama is incredibly naïve if he thinks attacking Arizona is going to get him street “cred” with the thugs in the HRC. The apology tour is getting old, my friends.

Gov. Brewer is blowing more hot air in the Arizona desert. The report's statement on SB 1070 is essentially value-neutral. It states facts that shows the federal government is reviewing internal immigration issues in the context of our immigration policy overall, but steers clear of any description of SB 1070's anti-Latino effects. It is a report submitted within the context of U.N.-monitored international treaties on human rights; a far cry from the standard right-wing xeonophobic foamings about "one-world government" that has all the survivalists atwitter.

If Brewer bothered to read the report, she would be very proud of what Secretary Clinton said about the United States's preeminent moral authority as the world's oldest constitutional democracy.

Of course, one cannot blame Arizona for complaining about this. Whatever one thinks of the Arizona policy, we have a judicial system capable of determining whether Arizona is within its rights to pass that law and the case is ongoing. We don't need the U.N. to sit in judgment of our legal system and Constitution. They lack the moral authority to do so.

The idea that the Obama administration thinks that the U.N. should play that role is ridiculous and is symptomatic of the hypocritical tendency of the administration to cowtow to the U.N., despite the U.N.'s horrible record of tolerating human rights abuses and its internal governance problems and corruption.

Add this to the long list of campaign issues for Republicans in November courtesy of the administration.

Congratulations to Secretary Clinton for highlighting it in the State Department's report to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Her job is to present the U.S. in the best light to the world, and Arizona's law is the worst the U.S. has to offer to the international community, especially Latin America.

The U.S. should shine as a bright beacon of liberty to the world. The Arizona law, which violates the constitutional rights of American citizens with brown skin, is the dark side.

Like it or not, we live in the world. And the best foreign policy is to show people who live in the Middle East and Latin America that we welcome Latinos and Muslims as our own. Then they may welcome us.

Can we soon expect to see U.N. troops patrolling the streets of Phoenix?

This administration will apparently stop at nothing to inflame the illegal immigration issue and demonize those who disagree with them. There is a huge distinction between arguing that federal law preempts state law on immigration (which is probably true) and arguing that the federal action in this case is instead a defense of global human rights.

This is an "inside the family" intergovernmental dispute on U.S. constitutional law and the mechanics of state law enforcement (i.e., is simply directing local police not to engage in racial profiling, as the Arizona law does, a sufficient protection against it?). The Obama administration's addressing it in a U.N. report is akin to a conservative Republican president asking UNICEF to help overturn a permissive state abortion law.

One does not have to agree with the Arizona law to find this tactic offensive and way out of line with how this country manages its sovereignty and internal policy disagreements.

If I did not know better, I would suggest that Eric Holder had deliberately set out to put Gov. Jan Brewer on a national Republican ticket. With Hillary getting Brewer international national and exposure, she could be grooming a successor.

I fail to see how bashing an action of a state before an international body enhances respect for the United States abroad. Nor do I comprehend how the administration's vigorous opposition to a statute an overwhelming majority of the American public supports enhances the Obama administration's standing at home. It could render the law superfluous by actually enforcing existing immigration statutes. Instead, it prefers the path it likes best, identity politics.

Of all Obama's appointees, I had thought Hillary the most savvy. I stand corrected. It was, after all, her misguided support for a unpopuar state law -- the one that allowed illegal aliens to hold driver's licenses in New York -- that helped bring the curtain down on her presidential campaign. Why is she touching this hot stove again?

Someone ought to replay the tape of Obama, Edwards, Dodd and moderator Tim Russert -- all at once -- going after her in that now famous debate in Philadelphia.

Some of us remember it as the "picking on the girl" moment. Someone at State should inquire whether Obamacare covers treatment for the secretary of state's tin ear. As she recovers, the anti-Arizona language should be excised from the document.

The president and his administration that was suppose to unite America has divided our nation.

They have pitted states against states, the federal government against states and now the federal government has sold us out to the international community for misplaced scrutiny and scorn to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Arizona law mirrors almost verbatim, well settled federal law with regard to immigration law and enforcement. If the Arizona law is a violation of “human rights,” then surely the federal law is as well as is Mexico’s law and I suspect many other nations' immigration laws.

It is despicable and divisive for this administration to allege human rights violations with regard to the Arizona immigration law where none clearly exists. The federal government's allegation is about as credible as the members of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Cuba? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Libya? China? Cameroon? Just to name a few.

You can't remove the truth because a politician finds it offensive. The Arizona law is being challenged in federal court, parts of it have been enjoined. The State Department is stating the obvious. Sorry Gov. Brewer, the truth sometimes hurts!

This administration is referred to by many as the first post-American Admanistration. With the affront to the will of the Arizonan and American people -- and our nation’s sovereignty -- this U.N. Human Rights Council statement represents, we are now rapidly approaching another prefix – “anti.”

The American people’s laws call for the borders to be enforced and violators to be detained and returned to their countries of origin. Arizona’s law does nothing more than echo those of our nation.

And polling shows that 70+ percent of the American people agree with Arizona – and thereby our existing immigration laws.

The Obama administration, however, is actively working to undermine and countermand them. They are creating de facto amnesty by not having the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies investigate illegal aliens – thereby allowing them to remain in the country. And they are now working to create as much wiggle room as possible for illegal aliens to vote.

So when the people of Arizona draw attention to the Obama administration’s contravention of our immigration laws - by simply emphasizing their enforcement – the administration makes the determination that they must be stopped by any means necessary.

Including two tried and true liberal modes of assault – the lawsuit and the disparagement campaign.

That the Obama administration has gone so far as to ensconce these in a United Nations report puts them internationally at odds with the American people it purports to represent.

That it unashamedly did so in the Human Rights Council – the membership of which includes human rights paragons China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia – unquestionably demonstrates how far past America this administration thinks it is.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said on Sunday that national party organizations shouldnt endorse in primaries. When asked if the defeat of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski should worry the party, Barbour responded: We do not take sides in primaries, and heres why: the Republicans in Alaska have a right and should pick their nominee.

Joe Miller, the surprise likely victor in the Alaska Senate race, has complained that the National Republican Senatorial Committee favored Murkowski; the committee says its policy is to support incumbents. And earlier this election season, NRSC-favored candidates Trey Grayson and Jane Norton lost their respective primaries.

National party committees are playing with fire when they endorse primary candidates who are in competitive races. Two examples from recent history show how the NRCC got burned by intervening in GOP primaries in the South.

In 2006, the NRCC, under then-chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), strongly supported Iraq War veteran Van Taylor over Tucker Anderson, a former aide to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), in Texas’s 17th District (Waco, etc.). The scuttlebutt was that Reynolds wanted a war veteran on the ticket. The problem was that Taylor had just moved into the district from Dallas, obviously just to make the race. Despite the enormous money and muscle generated by the NRCC, Taylor managed only a 54 percent to 46 percent victory over the very underfunded Anderson in the primary, then went on to lose big time – 58 percent to 40 percent – to vulnerable incumbent Chet Edwards (D-Texas).

In another race, in 2008 in Alabama’s 2nd District (Montgomery, etc.), the NRCC got behind state Rep. Jay Love in the GOP primary, presumably because of his deep pockets (both parties love “self-funders”). The problem was state Sen. Harri Ann Smith also had strong support, and forced the better-funded Love into a runoff. Smith then refused to back Love in the general election and he subsequently lost to Democrat Bobby Bright.

When incumbents get strong primary challenges, ideally the national committees should stay neutral, but that’s not going to happen. Otherwise, there may be special occasions when the national committees should get involved in primaries for open seats, for example, to make sure Louisiana ex-KKKer David Duke doesn’t get nominated. But those occasions should be rare. Otherwise, the local folks, where elections are decided, feel embittered, hurting the party and reducing public confidence in a -- small-d -- democratic system.

Gov. Barbour is trying to put a happy spin on a bad situation for the GOP -- the fact that its face is being changed by canny primary strategies that appeal to the motivated right-wing voter. The plain truth is that a GOP that fields extremist candidates is not a GOP likely to take the House or the Senate. Endorsements by the national party that are rejected by the hard-core right would signal to moderates just how fringe the nominee is, and make them consider staying home or casting a vote for a moderate Democrat/independent -- just what is likely to happen in Florida.

What is going on in GOP is more than a family feud; it is a civil war. And like all civil wars, it is fratricidal and unusually brutal. Beneath the soothing and reassuring message of conciliation from GOP leaders in Washington, this insurrection threatens the established order in the party in spite of the stone wall of Republican opposition to the Obama agenda.

At the very least, the management of both House and Senate GOP caucuses will become vastly more difficult and complicated.

I don’t often find myself agreeing with Haley Barbour, but there’s a good argument to be made for national committees letting the people of a state or district decide who they want to send or send back to Washington rather than having a blanket policy of supporting incumbents in the primaries regardless of how popular or unpopular they may be.

From a D.C. perspective, of course, there may be all kinds of things the people of a state don’t realize that the committees do, e.g., just how much incumbency is an advantage in the general or the fact that a candidate the party faithful may adore is just too far outside of the mainstream to have a chance in a general election the incumbent is likely to win.

But House and Senate seats weren’t intended as lifetime appointments, and if the people of a party in a state or district are concerned about how one of their elected officials is doing, the committees might want to consider factors like electability and values or ideology (not ideological purity, but whether the incumbent is as close to core party values as is the challenger, as in Sestak vs. Specter) on a case by case basis, however much that may engender a bloody political process of its own — or just stay out if the primary race looks too close to call and there is no compelling reason other than incumbency to get involved.

Haley has it right again. Party campaign committees should stay out of primaries. Their job is to elect, maintain and increase the numbers of their fellow partisans in Congress, not to protect incumbents.

There is indeed something hypocritical in about a party that claims to favor turning more the power over to the states attempting to influence the outcomes of state primaries. The NRSC has been especially tone-deaf to the sentiments of Republican voters all across the country.

In addition to getting on the wrong side of voters in Kentucky, Colorado, Alaska, and Nevada, it attempted to treat Charlie Crist as if he were the incumbent senator in Florida and rallied, for the second time behind Arlen Specter against a conservative challenger, only to see Arlen become a Democrat. How much egg can these people have on their face, before they change their diet?

Political parties are, strictly speaking, private entities. Therefore, they're free to insinuate themselves into primary contests, or not. But as they do, so they will be judged.

Haley Barbour was absolutely right, therefore, to say that national party organizations shouldn't endorse (ordinarily, incumbents) in primaries -- much less assist one candidate over others. To the extent they do, they confirm the view of many Americans that the political class is more interested in preserving power -- its own -- than in governing for the common good under constitutional principle.

Do we need any better evidence than the way Republicans ran from the term limits plank in the Contract with America after they took over Congress in 1995? Oh, I forgot, there is better evidence: the way Democrats never even paid lip service to term limits.

If it weren't for the emergence of the tea party and its bevy of weird candidates elbowing their way past GOP incumbents and GOP favorites, we wouldn't be debating this question. Seeking the strongest state tickets to win in November has long prompted national party organizations to make primary endorsements. The problem for Barbour and other Republican leaders this year is that in supporting candidates more "acceptable" to general election voters, they unleash the unrelenting fury of' "Palinistas" who never really trusted them anyway.

While the general approach should be to let the voters decide, there are clearly cases where parties will try to keep out inappropriate candidates such as Nazis who could harm the party and the country. The problem is that people will differ on the definition of "inappropriate." It sounds like Gov. Barbour would have parties intervene in only the rarest of cases, and he is probably wise to take that approach.

There is a major family feud in the GOP as the Young Turks try to elbow the Old Bulls aside. Watch how many losing GOP candidates refuse to endorse the winner (Didier and Rossi in Washington, McCollum and Scott in Florida, just two of several examples beyond Alaska.) For the lock-step discipline party, this is unusual. The thing is, the Old Bulls just talk about tea party values to gain votes (see John McCain) , the younger candidates mean it (see Sarah Palin). That scares the GOP more than it scares Democrats because not only is the GOP is more comfortable with President McCain than President Palin, the rest of the country overwhelmingly is.

Shouldn't endorse? C'mon. National parties, and especially the congressional and senatorial committees, often research, locate, recruit, field, and help fund candidates the party has determined will be competitive in a general election in the first place. So national parties have a vested interest in wanting the primary electorate to elect candidates that the party professionals believe will be most competitive in a general election.

On a few occasions, the electorate rejects the candidate who comes from the party slate. Nothing wrong with that either.

But when you run against your own party like Joe Miller has (and before him, also in Alaska, as Sarah Palin did in the governor's race), you can't expect the national party, whose candidate you just defeated, to embrace your candidacy immediately (even before all the votes are cast). Especially, as in Alaska politics, a candidate named Murkowski has proven a winner for decades, while a candidate named Joe Miller is untested outside the 2010 Alaskan Republican party vote.

Good luck to Mr. Miller, but if his campaign is taking advice, the first thing to do is stop whining about the party you just smacked in the face. You're going to be asking them for money soon enough to help run in the general.

Amazing to me that after the Beck rally in D.C., this trivia is the lead question of the week. Wake up! Something very important just happened involving 300,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Don't you think it might be worth a question (or two)? And while I am at it, when do I get to hear the lefties explain why Eric Holder is justified in postponing the announcement of the 911 trial until after the midterm election?

Gov. Barbour is 100 percent correct. The NRSC’s position of supporting incumbents usurps the power of Republican state voters to select the Republican primary candidate of their own choosing. The advantage an incumbent has on their own is hard enough to overcome without the NRSC injecting itself into a race. This is a matter of fundamental fairness, not statistics or polling.

Steven Czonstka (guest)
FL:

The GOP's national organizations are often unaware of the sentiments of the grassroots at the state and local levels. An excellent example was the NRSC's initial attempt to endorse Florida Gov. Charlie Crist over former speaker of the Florida House, Marco Rubio, for the Senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez.

In their haste to endorse a candidate they thought to be a sure winner, they almost chose another RINO in the form of Arlen Specter. As the Republican state committeeman for Okaloosa County in the conservative heartland of the Florida Panhandle, I knew this would enrage local Republicans. "Wind-Sock" Charlie proved his true colors by switching to Independent. The credibility of the GOP's national committees is called into question. Let the voters choose.

Tom Genin (guest)
CT:

Just because the Hatfields are having a family squabble, the McCoys shouldn't mistake that for not knowing who they're really feuding with. Nor should the McCoys be so delusional that these little tiffs will somehow negate the anti-incumbent, anti-government, anti-Obama wave that is about to hit them come November.

The Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006 and everything else for the last two years. As each day passes and the Democrats enact and pursue policies that make things worse, dig a deeper hole, and raise unemployment closer to 10 percent, you can't keep saying things were worse than you thought and expect it to be believed. Because, if it's actually worse than you believed, you're incompetent. It's going to get worse. There, now it won't be "unexpected."

Chris Ferness (guest)
IL:

Mr. Calomiris ... I couldn't agree with you more. Although I am no fan of the tea party (don't hate them, but they are just not for me since I am a moderate, and I find them to be far off to the right), something important did happen in Washington this past weekend, and it deserves some attention.

George Stiller (guest)
FL:

The national party organizations should stay out of the primaries until the people decide who and what they want in a candidate. There is already too much infiltration by the GOP into tea party activities to obtain a clear picture of what each organization represents.

From my observations of the primaries to date, if you are a Democrat you are likely to vote for the return of the incumbents. If you are a Republican, a large percentage of you are likely to vote for the extremists. As a result, there is a battle going on within the GOP organization that needs to be worked out. That may result in the GOP splitting into two separate organizations. In the last decade, like me, more than 30 percent of the GOP walked away from the GOP due to the growing extremism. I myself changed my affiliation to unaffiliated and still consider myself a fiscal conservative. However, I am not one of the moral extremists. As a former elected official, I still believe that fiscal accountability in government can only come with good management of our social responsibilities.

Al Zeller (guest)
NY:

National party involvement is needed but it's often misplaced. If Dems had looked into Alvin Greene a little further they would have seen that he was unelectable. In that case full force should have been used to see he wasn't nominated in the primary by giving full support to Rawls with 'get out and vote' drives and primary ads pointing out Greene's flaws.

But national support has to be blind as well. It can't just look at the big picture and say the incumbent has done this and that for the party plus has the best chance of winning so we'll back him or her. Elections are local.

Al Horvath (guest)
SC:

The U.S. government and federal officials should be protecting the USA (including the state of Arizona), the U.S. Constitution and the individual rights of U.S. citizens to be safe from foreign invasion. Come November, the people will have their say.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Have we all heard the old saying - probably from the plagues in Europe a few hundred years ago "a pox on both your houses"?

This is my statement in reaction to the question - the libertarian, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and the other rich reactionary radicals lurking in all the secret dark corners of propaganda's lies and "doublespeak" disinformation in the extremist Party of Tea sippers drinking their poisoned brew of more tax cuts for the richest Americans and for the rest of the people it is "let them eat cake" which was the name of the bread for poor people in that deadly era of the plagues.

Whether these thieves and pro-anarchy economy and job destabilizers' actions prior to a right wing takeover of our government win out or the older and shrinking party once called the Grand Old Party do it, I must say it is garbage in and garbage out in either case. The only real difference is in regard to the methods of attaining an authoritarian military Industrial complex where the huge money corporations and people such as those named above - and all their paid mouthpieces and propagandists like Breitbart and Frank Luntz work in the shadows in the evil land of money only, and humanity and human rights advocates are jailed in isolation.

Laura Halvorsen (guest)
FL:

Oh brother. The midterm elections are two months away. You've got half of the Democrats trying to defend their indefensible record and you've got the other half of Democrats running away from Obama so fast they are leaving skid marks. And you want to discuss a Republican interparty tiff?

You know, 60 days is a long time to try to keep people distracted from the donkey in the room. In fact, not only is there an donkey in the room, but he has the clicker and keeps trying to change the channel. Is it going to work? Yeah ... not so much.

Michael Evans (guest)
MA:

Arizona law/Human rights: I have to wonder what Hillary or Obama are thinking with this one. From Hillary's viewpoint, inclusion in the report is yet another example of Obama's distance from the political reality of most Americans.

So if Hillary is contemplating a run in 2012, she's helping to pound in another nail in the Obama coffin. Or does Obama really believe this stuff? Is this the best we could come up with to show the world that we are supporting human rights? Does the report mention the fact that illegal immigrants can wander into any ER in the country and get some level of medical care? Where else in the world does this happen? Certainly not Mexico. I don't know why Obama continues to lead with his chin on these issues and Republicans another issue when he is getting pounded by the economy etc.

His refusal to view America as a great country will be the undoing of the Demcratic Party. Who wants a leader who doesn't believe in us? I would be curious to know if he approved this. Personally I think including this in the report to the U.N. does nothing except give ammunition to the president's opponents, foreign and domestic.

Maybe he needs to spend less time vacationing and more time working.

Gene Baker (guest)
OH:

Typical rot from the State Department. The endless lies and nonsense coming from this administration (Arizona law violates civil rights) regarding citizens standing up for the law and then being accused of violating civil rights boggles the mind.

If you don't have a right to be here legally, then you have no business complaining about how someone is making you obey the law. What's next? Complaining that going through school zones at 65 miles per hour during school hours violates the driver's right to get home on time? Is that "profiling" too?

And you wonder why 300,000 people were in D.C. last week demanding this government straighten up and fly right? They've been flying upside down now for the last 18 months. D.C. - where dementia reigns and ethics and morals are in short supply in our Alice-in-Wonderland government.

Beck's "demonstration" was quiet this time. No overturned cars, no smashed windows, no setting fires, and no rioting with the police. But fail to pay heed to what he was saying and you will only help to reap the whirlwind.

Stefan Saal (guest)
NH:

The Republican Party has become a wild melee where everybody fends for himself. Will the mob slaughter all who come into their hands? Will inferior people come into power?
In Arizona, we see how readily economic duress devolves into an loss of principles.

Todd Fritz (guest)
GA:

I would like to know why the media has not challenged the State Department's political statement. In order for their to be human rights abuses, the law must have been enacted and enforced. The controversial portions were not and have been enjoined. So, what's the problem? No law existed that was discriminatory. Should the courts uphold it, then who is Hillary to second guess it?

Jim Wojtasiewicz (guest)
VA:

Barbour means to quell discord in the name of dissent, an amusing hypocrisy reminiscent of libertarians telling everybody else how to think, or free marketeers demanding a rigid economic policy of not having any economic policy.

Al Zeller (guest)
NY:

So if SB 1070 is a violation of human rights and the state law is very close to federal law but with more safe guards built in then is Hillary saying that the federal government also violates human rights each time it enforces federal law?

jim wojtasiewicz (guest)
VA:

Our most fundamental American value is that basic human rights are inseparable from our very nature as human beings, not given and not able to be taken away by any government (including the government of Arizona). It sounds like a lot of Americans don't believe that any more, but rather that American rights are superior to human rights. Is that what the State Department report should have have said? Sounds kind of foolish, doesn't it?

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Of course it is a violation of human rights, isn't just about everything these extremists try to do? Giving all the borrowed money to the richest 1-2 percent of Americans since Reagan and followed up by the Cheney-Bush administration in recent years is a violation of human rights along with the SCOTUS decision on corporations giving unlimited funds to those people they support in the Congress - and you will all see the results of this decision in November - even though the GOP bravado about taking control of Congress is whistling in the darkest night - this dream is bogus because people cannot be in the category of "you can fool most of the people all of the time".

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